Editors’ Note and Acknowledgments

For three days in May 2001, the University of Minnesota’s Center for Early Modern History and Center for Medieval Studies joined together as the Consortium for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Minnesota to host an interdisciplinary conference: Conversion to Christianity: A Late Antique, Medieval, and Early Modern Phenomenon. Twenty-two scholars from the US and Europe gathered to discuss the processes and impacts of conversion from the perspectives of language and literature studies, music, archaeology, art history, ethnography, history, and religious studies. The twelve essays in this volume are derived from the papers presented at this conference.

Enterprises of this kind require assistance in many forms. Institutional support for this publication and for the conference came from the University of Minnesota’s College of Liberal Arts Special Events Fund; the departments of Anthropology, Classical and Near Eastern Studies, English, and History; the Center for Medieval Studies; and the McKnight Arts and Humanities Endowment. Special thanks are owing to the graduate students, past and present, who in 2001 helped with the organization and running of the conference and who, as members of the staff of the Center for Early Modern History, contributed to the production of this volume. They include: Dr. Ellen Arnold, Dr. Eric Bang, Tovah Bender, Sara Cammeresi, Tracey Daniel, Dr. Noel Delgado, Amy Fisher, Greg Glidden, Dr. Anne Good, Dr. Jonathan Good, Rushika Hage, Kate Haurilick, Isaac Joslin, Dr. Youngkyung Kim, Dr. Karolyn Kinane, Dr. Jack Norton, Kelli Ringhofer, Dr. Michael Ryan, Dr. Debra Salata, and Jamie Stephenson.

Most importantly, the editors owe a debt of gratitude to our contributors for their patience. The Center for Early Modern History's conference proceedings had long been published by Cambridge University Press. However, when this, the 6th volume in the series Studies in Comparative Early Modern History, was in the midst of the editorial process, the Press informed the Center that it was suspending publication of such volumes. Subsequent inquiries revealed that a number of publishers had ceased to publish edited volumes of this sort and those who did either required subventions or placed too high a purchasing price on the published volumes. Thus, the Center decided to launch its own publication series, Minnesota Studies in Early Modern History. Getting this new series off the ground has been a lengthy and complicated enterprise. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for Cambridge University Press for their insightful comments. We thank our contributors most sincerely for their willingness to update their papers several years after submission. Despite the unavoidable delay in publication, we believe that the papers presented here remain timely and important contributions to our understanding of conversion to Christianity as a process.